Hag-ridden by the Future

Some of you have perhaps red and appreciated the Screwtape Letters written by C. S. Lewis. You may recall that it was a literary device that Lewis used to warn fellow Christians against the wiles and the stratagems of the ancient enemy of our souls. Screwtape was a senior apparatchik in the host of Lucifer. He wrote to advise a fiend in training…Wormwood’s diabolical efforts to destabilize the man to whom he had been assigned. I commend the little book to you.

In one chapter, Screwtape instructed Wormwood, “we want a man hag-ridden by the Future — haunted by visions of an imminent heaven”… or a looming hell upon earth…prepare your subject…he advises…to be ready to break the Enemy’s commandments in the present..and make him think he can bring about heaven on earth or avert the other. See to it that his faith depends upon the success or failure of schemes, the outcomes of which he will never live to see. We want a whole race perpetually in pursuit of the rainbow’s end, never honest, nor kind, nor happy now, but always sacrificing every real gift of the enemy upon the altar of an unattainable utopia’.

I would not have Holy Trinity Church develop a reputation for being hag-ridden by the Future…as those who are forever ready to chase rainbows. Most of our nation’s problems can be effectively addressed only by true repentance…and by a wholesale embrace of the gospel of Jesus.

Isaiah was overwhelmed with the awful realization that his people were in outright rebellion against Holy God. His first response was a prayer of confession and repentance.